Renault Monday debrief: Imola

To stop or not to stop? Pat Symonds talks strategy after the San Marino
Grand Prix.
The paddock was alive with speculation about 'tactical errors', bluff
and counter-bluff, and fuel loads after yesterday's race. Did Renault
throw away a race win...

To stop or not to stop? Pat Symonds talks strategy after the San Marino
Grand Prix.

The paddock was alive with speculation about 'tactical errors', bluff
and counter-bluff, and fuel loads after yesterday's race. Did Renault
throw away a race win with a tactical mistake? Or did they do everything
they could to try and steal the win from Michael Schumacher's Ferrari?
Clearly, we believe the latter -- and we asked Pat Symonds to explain
exactly why...

Q: Pat, let's start at the beginning. How did the first stint go for
Fernando?

Pat Symonds: To be honest, the first stint unfolded pretty much as we expected. We
saw Michael pulling away from everybody, as we had predicted --
although perhaps not as fast as we had thought. It also became clear
during that stint, that the tyre degradation was very low. That meant we
knew the longer first stint we had planned, would allow us to pull back
some time on Michael -- as, indeed, proved to be the case

Q: And what about the second stint of the race?

PS: That was when things became very surprising. Michael's tyre
degradation was suddenly dreadful -- and it very soon became clear
that we were significantly quicker than him, and running much faster. It
took Fernando less than ten laps to close the gap and start pressuring
him.

Q: Presumably, then, the logical thing to do would have been to run longer
again and pass him at the stops?

PS: Yes, that would -- but by the middle of the second stint, we are
already locked into our strategy. We make the decision about our second
stop during the first stint, and at that point, we had no idea that
Michael would have the problems he did.

So we followed our optimum
pattern, which was to do a shorter second stint in order to improve our
track position relative to Michael. Unlike the television predictions,
which had us stopping on lap 47 I believe, our measurements said we would
stop only a lap later than Michael in all likelihood, or possibly even on
the same lap.

Q: In reality, though, you stopped Fernando early...

PS: Yes, exactly. Fernando pitted two laps earlier than we had planned.
Had we been certain of going significantly further than Michael in the
second stint then obviously, the option would have been to stay out --
and it would have probably worked. But we didn't have that extra fuel,
and we would probably have run only a lap longer than Michael.

During that lap, he would have been on new tyres and we saw in qualifying that
they were particularly strong on those opening 'golden' laps. So we
didn't think it would work for us and obviously, simply following Michael
in and out of the pits was not an option. So we got creative, and took
the only other option available to try and get the win -- to bring
Fernando in early...

Q: Was it easy to know which lap to stop on?

PS: We had to judge it so that we didn't stop too early, and drop into
Massa's clutches. So as soon as we saw we were clear, we discussed it
with Fernando and gave him a choice: if he was able to overtake Michael,
he should stay out; and if not, then he should pit. He pitted, we went
for it, and we missed out by just 0.7s when the stops cycled through.

Q: So what was the key?

PS: The really significant thing was that on the free lap after Fernando
pitted, Michael showed he had some performance in reserve. On the lap we
pitted, he did a lap of 1:25.7 -- where his average speed in the ten
previous laps, was 1:27.4. The lap-times during the second stint had not
suggested he had that performance in reserve.

Q: Is it frustrating to get beaten by such a fine margin?

PS: I think that's what motor racing is all about to be honest. Hats off
to Michael and Ferrari, because they pulled a blinder! From our point of
view, we could have run our planned strategy and still finished second.
But it would have been an unsatisfying second place, because there would
have been a 'what if' factor because we hadn't explored every option
available to us.

As it was, we tried everything we could -- and it
didn't come off because we saw two cars with very equal levels of
performance, battling for the win. As I said yesterday, "nothing
ventured, nothing gained." But in this case, nothing lost either.